Staff combat (and combat in general) is broken.

[Mehbah]

I've played for 38 hours now and recently became a mage. Up to this point I had used a sword and shield since the staff combat simply wasn't as useful. I had hoped this would change as I joined up with the order and got some training, but no luck. I've tried raising my staff level to 6 or 7 and it just doesn't help much.

To begin with, staff attacks are simply too slow. They're so slow that it makes player skill irrelevant. For example: ghouls. It's outright impossible to attack them safely. Their attacks are much faster than your own, to the point where you can initate an attack while they aren't attacking, but still get hit because they initiated an attack after you. This happens very frequently in combos, even if you time your attacks correctly. And unless you use combos, your attacks do little more than tickle enemies.

This is a big problem with the combat in general; enemy attacks are practically instant and you have no way to see them coming. Trying to maintain a distance is pointless since many enemies have insanely fast lunges If you aren't already blocking when they use one, you need superhuman reflexes to block or dodge it. When you're attacking, enemies can dodge to the side. If you're unlucky, they can dodge your attack and attack you from the side before your attack even finishes and you have a chance to block.

On the subject of your dodges, they're terrible. Even if you manage to dodge an enemy's attack, they might simply turn around and hit you with the follow up. Just about the only enemies dodges are useful for are boars and spinerats, since their attacks are reliable and they're unlikely to combo. And even that is just because staves can't block their attacks so you're forced to find openings. Why is that, anyway? I haven't found a single advantage that staves have over sword and shield. They're slower, can't block as many attacks, and I haven't noticed any big difference in damage.

I'm getting very disappointed in the combat. I had hoped it would be similar to the Souls games in the sense that you can beat anything with enough skill even with the starter equipment, and improving your stats and equipment would only even the odds so you don't need to be incredibly good to finish the game. As a rule of thumb, a game should never force you to take damage, or it's a bad combat system. With enough skill, you should be able to avoid damage entirely, but that's impossible with enemies that have absolutely no safe openings.

[lionhart]

Mehbah님이 먼저 게시:

The issue wasn't the choice of staff combat, but rather that they made staff combat significantly worse than sword combat in the first place. They could have balanced it by giving it some strong advantage if they wanted to keep the slower swings.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree then. :) I am not criticizing you for making bad choices. I am only pointing out that I think it is by design that staff combat is weaker than sword combat.

Risen is not supposed to be like the Elder Scrolls and Witcher games where you can become proficient in everything. Mages are meant to rely on magic to get through the game, and that is exactly what you did by using magic bullet and summoning Fred. If you want to go through the game as a melee fighter then you are meant to join the bandits; they have access to better weapons, armor, and melee trainers.

All Pirahna Bytes games force the player to choose an area of specialization and stick with it. Warriors use swords, rangers use bows, and mages use magic. Again I would suggest that this is by design; they are emphasizing the "role" aspect of role playing games.